Representations of Scotland
Version 2: 11 November 2013
Rick Instrell
www.deep-learning.co.uk
info@deep-learning.co.uk
Association for Media Education in Scotland
Aims
To explore the concept of representation by:
1. Examining stereotypes of Scotland & the Scots
2. Relating these representations to concepts of
ideology, myth and discourse
3. Exemplifying ways of teaching representation
through the analysis of film, advertising and
print
4. Exemplify ways of teaching representation
through media production
Representation
Can be understood in a number of ways:
1. Process of translating concepts into
words, sounds and images
2. Continual re-presenting of stereotypes
3. Re-presenting in new non-stereotyped
ways
4. Who represents whom and for what
purpose?
Representation & the Real World
How are representations related to the real
world? Four possibilities:
1. Real world shapes representations
2. Representations shape real world
3. Relationship is two-way and interactive
4. Distinction is false – all we have is
representation and there is no ‘real
world’
Mediation
• Media not a ‘window on the world’
• Media come between real world and the
audience i.e. they mediate
• Media select what is – and what is not –
represented and then portray their
selections in particular ways rather than
others
• Mass media construct representations to
maximise audiences and hence profit
Active and Passive Audience
• Naïve view of audience is that of passive
recipient
• Audiences are active differential decoders
and can resist dominant meanings
• Audiences are increasingly active creators
of meaning and can represent their own
perceptions of reality
• This can change power relations in society
Summary Diagrams
Naïve view of media
Window
Real world
(media neutral)
Audience
(passive)
Media studies view of media
Real world
Mediation
(media
constructs
representations
by processes of
selection &
portrayal)
Audience
(active
differential
decoders)
Ideology
•
•
•
•
•
Althusser: ideology is the common-sense beliefs,
meanings and activities through which we think,
communicate and act
Function of ideology in relation to power relations in
society
Dominant ideologies are means by which dominant
groups maintain leadership without resource to
physical coercion e.g. patriarchy – the idea that men
are superior to women
Society’s institutions are the purveyors of dominant
ideology (family, education, media, religion, business,
etc.)
They attempt to form individual and shared beliefs
along dominant lines as if these ideas are natural,
universal and unchanging
Hegemony
•
•
•
•
Gramsci: dominance is never total – oppositional
ideologies from subordinate groups express rejection
of dominant ideologies e.g. feminism is an oppositional
ideology which in its varied forms challenges
patriarchy
Hegemonic struggle between dominant and
subordinate ideologies
Texts often reflect these struggles
We ourselves are the site of discursive struggles
(interdiscourse)
Myth
Myth: culturally-specific explanation of
national history and character
N.B. Myth can also be universal e.g. Joseph Campbell’s
Hero’s Journey narrative found in stories from may
different cultures
Discourse
• Ideology & myths are inscribed in discourse i.e. they are
expressed in words, images and sounds
• So a text could be analysed in gender terms by tracing
the struggle between patriarchal & feminist discourses
• Ideologies and myths are ways of making texts
intelligible to audiences
• They also give the individual a sense of collective and
individual identity
• Identity has a sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’
Discourses of Scotland
The debate over representations of Scotland can be traced
to the 1981 the Scotch Myths exhibition and the 1982
Scotch Reels event. Three dominant discourses were
identified:
•
Tartanry
•
Kailyard
•
Clydesideism
Tartanry: 1. Highlander
• Fierce but romantic
kilted Highland man
set against wild
landscape
Tartanry: 1. Highlander
Tartanry: 1. Highlander
Tartanry: 2. Elegiac
• Nostalgic feeling for a lost way of life
(related to Flodden, Culloden, Highland
clearances)
Tartanry: 2. Elegiac
Tartanry: 3. Landscape
• Scotland as
peripheral & remote
far from metropolitan
heart of British culture
Tartanry: 4. Militarism
• Soldiers and pipers
marching into bloody
battle
Tartanry: 5. Carnivalesque
• Red-nosed, kilted,
drunken, mean
Scotsman
Tartanry: 5. Carnivalesque
Tartanry: 5. Carnivalesque contd.
Tartanry: 5. Carnivalesque contd.
Tartanry: 5. Carnivalesque contd.
Kailyard
• Scotland as small towns full of
‘characters’ (SR Crockett, JM
Barrie, Ian MacLaren, People’s
Friend, Sunday Post)
• People have little interest in
what goes on in the rest of the
world
• Central characters of kailyard
novels are prominent members
of a the community
• Local intrigue and homespun
wisdom
• Sentimental and couthy
'Where's My Good Little Girl?', 1882 by Thomas Faed
Kailyard 2
Whisky Galore!
Urban Kailyard 1
Discursive Unconscious
• Colin McArthur: film
and tv
representations are
tartan exteriors &
kailyard mores
Brigadoon
Commercial Exploitation
Commercial Exploitation
Commercial Exploitation
Commercial Exploitation
Commercial Exploitation
Post Cards
Post Cards
Tartan Day
Modern Urban Kailyard 2
• Hybrid of kailyard and
Clydesideism (Rab C Nesbitt,
Chewin the Fat, Still Game)
Modern Urban Kailyard 2
Critique of Scotch Myths Debate
• John Caughie: reductive and ignored texts that did not fit
polemic (e.g. Bill Douglas trilogy: My Childhood, My Ain
Folk, My Way Home)
• Pam Cook: nostalgia can play a productive role by
releasing desire for resistance and social change
• Cairns Craig: Scottish cultural renaissance of 1980s and
1990s was involved in construction of new myths
• One could argue that Braveheart had a progressive
impact in mobilising the vote for a Scottish parliament
• Beveridge and Turnbull: meanings never passively
consumed but are subject to active selection and
adjustment e.g. Jacobite rebellion has led to tourist
kitsch but also produced prose, poetry and song that
symbolise rebellion and idealism
Usefulness of Debate
• Texts can be analysed in terms of whether
they express or interrogate the
tartan/kailyard monster or represent those
usually absent from the discourse e.g.
children, women, ethnic minorities
Moving on from Scotch Myths
• Scotch Myths debate needs to be moved on because
Scotland has changed radically since early 1980s
• Debate around a restricted over-simplified number of
discourses
• Debate framed within Marxist/post-Marxist problematic
• Tim Edensor’s analysis
• Gerry Hassan’s analysis
Edensor on National Identity 1
Edensor sees this national identity operating at both
spectacular and mundane levels:
• state level: providing the legal and bureaucratic
framework within which we act
• the spatial level: the borders; iconic sites; rural, urban
and domestic spaces
• performative level: the rituals, ceremonies, sports,
celebrations as well as everyday competences,
embodied habits and daily, weekly and annual
synchronised activities of everyday life.
• the material level: shared meanings of everyday objects
such as clothes, tools, food, drink, vehicles, ephemera
as well as obvious carriers of national symbolism such
as stamps, currency, official logos and flags
Edensor on National Identity 2
• there need not be agreement as to the interpretation of
shared objects, ideas and symbols
• a nation’s cultural resources provide the common ground
on which discursive battles take place
Scotland in early 1980s
Gerry Hassan:
• Decline of manufacturing sector
• Over 50% in trade union
• 52% living in council housing
• Political disempowerment under Thatcher
• Mass unemployment
• Economic and social dislocation
• Social conservatism in public and elite opinion
• Patronage by political and professional elite
• Stagnant cultural and artistic sector
Scotland in 2006
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Dominance of service sector
Declining trade union membership
Home ownership
Scottish parliament
Lower unemployment
Still deep degree of exclusion from employment market
Liberalism in public and elite opinion
Patronage still at work but under attack
Dynamic cultural and artistic sector
Significant migration from Eastern Europe
Shift
• Individualised society shaped by lifestyle and
consumption rather than social class
• Society more at ease with equality issues
• More feminised society
• Post-labourist, post-nationalist politics
• Globalisation and immigration
• Digital revolution
Inadequate Response
• Mindset and stories have not changed
• Nostalgia for collectivism (forgets its suffocating nature)
• Urban kailyard (lost male world in Kelman and
McIlvanney; ‘McLad’ culture of Tam Cowan and Stuart
Cosgrove)
• Despite decline of working class more people see
themselves as working class
What needs changed?
• Need an ethic of living, set of stories that embody how
we live now and in the future
• Has to capture:
– Individualism
– Renewal of collectivist values
– Pluralism
– Complexity
– Rapid change
– Post-nationalist politics
• Need to map past, current and future stories
Past Scottish Stories
Hassan identifies 11 basic historical stories:
1. Enterprising Scotland
2. Empire Scotland
3. Enlightenment Scotland
4. Educational Scotland
5. Calvinist Scotland
6. Tartan Scotland
7. Kailyard Scotland
8. Divided Scotland
9. Collectivist Scotland
10. Unionist Scotland
11. Nationalist Scotland
Current Stories
Hassan identifies 4 post-devolution stories:
1. Holyrood debacle
2. Toytown parliament
3. Souped-up Labour cooncil
4. Politically correct Scotland
Future Scottish Stories
Hassan identifies 6 post-devolution stories:
1. Labour minimalist devolution: politics of continuity
rather than change
2. Black and white Scotland: questions Scots’ ability to
govern themselves
And more positively
3. Post-nationalist Scotland: abandonment of oldfashioned nationalism
4. Smart Scotland: knowledge economy responding to
global markets
5. Adaptive Scotland: personalised, flexible, collaborative
6. New progressive Scotland: confident Scotland which
embraces change
Rebranding the Nation 1
Bond et al. identify processes involved in
rebranding Scotland:
1. Reiteration
– a historically positive feature is mobilised within a
contemporary context e.g. stressing education as a
past and current Scottish strength
2. Recapture
– a historically diminished feature is mobilised e.g.
trying to correct a perceived entrepreneurial deficit
which will recapture past economic success
Rebranding the Nation 2
3.
Reinterpretation
– a historically negative feature is mobilised as having
advantages or as being largely neutral e.g. the
Scottish diaspora to North America is seen as a way
of attracting those with Scots ancestry to return to
Scotland to utilise their skills or wealth
4. Repudiation
– negative features cannot be reinterpreted so are
omitted from current constructions of national
identity e.g. the dominance of an ‘employment
culture’ in the shipbuilding, steelmaking and mining
industries seen to be a barrier an entrepreneurial
economy based round small firms
Brand Pyramid for
Edinburgh Inspiring
Capital Campaign
ESSENCE
INSPIRING
CAPITAL
WORLD LEADER IN
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY,
EDUCATION, ARTS WHOSE
BEAUTY & ATMOSPHERE
INSPIRES
PERSONALITY
INVENTION
ASPIRATION
SINCERITY
DIVERSITY
ELEGANCE
WARMTH
IMAGINATIVE
VIBRANT
NOT LOUD
NOT BRASH
NOT INTIIDATING
DETERMINED
AUTHENTIC
CONFIDENT
NOT ARROGANT
NOT IMPERSONAL
NOT ALOOF
NOT COMPLICATED
NOT COLD
VALUES
TONE OF VOICE
Branding Edinburgh
Branding Glasgow
Branding Aberdeen(shire)
a brighter outlook
Creating a Brand
• Design a new brand for promoting the Scottish
Highlands as an upmarket tourist destination
• It usually helps to have a picture of your target audience
(e.g. London city workers on the Underground)
• You should produce
–
–
–
–
Strapline (slogan)
Logo
Typography
Choice of colours
and be able to justify each
(N.B. You may want to use a brand pyramid)
Bibliography 1
Beveridge, C. and Turnbull, R. (1989) The Eclipse of Scottish Culture: Inferiorism
and the Intellectuals. Edinburgh: Polygon.
Bond, R., McCrone, D. and Brown, A. (2003) ‘National Identity and Economic
Development: Reiteration, Recapture, Reinterpretation and Repudiation’. In
Nations and Nationalism, Vol.9:3: 371-391.
Caughie, J. (1990) ‘Representing Scotland: New Questions for Scottish Cinema’. In
E. Dick (ed.) (1990) From Limelight to Satellite: a Scottish Film Book. London:
BFI/Scottish Film Council.
Cook, P. (1996) Fashioning the Nation: Costume and Identity in British Cinema.
London: BFI.
Craig, C. (1982) ‘Myths Against History: Tartanry and Kailyard in 19th-Century
Scottish Literature’. In C. McArthur (ed.) (1982) Scotch Reels: Scotland in
Cinema and Television. London: BFI Publishing.
Craig, C. (1996) Out of History: Narrative Paradigms in Scottish and British Culture.
Edinburgh: Polygon.
Dick E. (ed.) (1990) From Limelight to Satellite: a Scottish Film Book. London:
BFI/Scottish Film Council.
Bibliography 2
Edensor, T. (2002) National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life. Oxford:
Berg.
Hassan, G. (2005) ‘That was Then and This is Now: Imagining New Stories about a
Northern Nation’. In Scotland 2020: Hopeful Stories for a Northern Nation, edited
by, Gerry Hassan, Eddie Gibb, Lydia Howland.
www.demos.co.uk/files/Scotland2020.pdf
McArthur, C. (ed.) (1982) Scotch Reels: Scotland in Cinema and Television. London:
BFI Publishing.
McArthur, C. (2003a) ‘Whisky Galore!’ and ‘The Maggie’. London: I.B. Taurus.
McArthur, C. (2003b) ‘Brigadoon’, ‘Braveheart’ and the Scots: Distortions of
Scotland in Hollywood Cinema. London: I.B. Taurus.
McCrone, D. (2001) Understanding Scotland: the Sociology of a Nation (2nd
edition). London: Routledge.
Petrie, D. (2000) Screening Scotland. London: BFI Publishing.
Petrie, D. (2004) Contemporary Scottish Fictions: Film, Television and The Novel.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.